Pro-Life for Whom?
How abortion bans are raising maternal mortality rates and endangering the lives they claim to protect
In the two years since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the legal landscape of reproductive rights has fractured sharply across the United States. While some states have codified protections for abortion access, others have enacted sweeping bans, often with narrow or nonexistent exceptions. These bans were introduced under the banner of being "pro-life." But the data emerging from states with abortion restrictions tells a different story—one where maternal mortality is rising, healthcare providers are retreating, and lives once protected are now at greater risk.
The Data Since Dobbs
Maternal mortality rates in the United States were already the highest among developed nations. But since the 2022 Dobbs decision, these rates have worsened, particularly in states that enacted abortion bans or extreme restrictions. According to the CDC, states with strict abortion laws—such as Texas, Mississippi, and Alabama—have seen sharp increases in maternal deaths, especially among Black and low-income women. Texas alone reported a 40% increase in maternal mortality between 2019 and 2022, a period that includes both COVID-19 pressures and the implementation of pre-Dobbs restrictions. cdc.gov
What’s most striking is the pattern: states that rushed to ban abortion after Dobbs already had some of the worst health outcomes for women. These same states often lack robust prenatal care, have higher rates of uninsured women, and face shortages of OB-GYNs. When abortion access is removed from this fragile system, the consequences are deadly.
Medical Necessity, Political Interference
One of the most alarming consequences of abortion bans is the inability of doctors to act when a pregnancy becomes life-threatening. In many banned states, the laws are so vaguely written—or so harshly enforced—that physicians fear legal repercussions even when intervening to save a mother’s life.
There are documented cases where women were denied care for ectopic pregnancies, incomplete miscarriages, or catastrophic fetal anomalies. Doctors, constrained by legal gray zones, have been forced to wait until a woman’s life is in clear and immediate danger before acting. For some patients, that delay has proven fatal.
These are not hypothetical tragedies. They are names, faces, and families now mourning preventable deaths.
Pro-Life—but for Whose Life?
The moral framework of the pro-life movement is based on the idea that every life matters. But when policies prevent life-saving care, we must ask: pro-life for whom?
Is it pro-life to force a woman to carry a doomed pregnancy until she bleeds out? Is it pro-life to make a grieving couple wait for a nonviable fetus to pass naturally while risking the mother’s future fertility? Is it pro-life to let both mother and baby die to satisfy a political ideal?
Even for those who believe deeply in the sanctity of life, the cruelty of these policies is hard to ignore. No one—on the left or the right—wants to lose babies. But when lives are at stake, decisions should be made by families and their doctors, not by politicians or prosecutors.
What We Lose
This issue is not just about individual loss. It is a public crisis with generational consequences. Every maternal death leaves behind grieving spouses, children, parents, and communities. Every time a woman dies because a hospital wouldn’t act quickly enough, the ripple effects spread through families, workplaces, and neighborhoods.
In some of the very states enforcing these bans, infant and child poverty rates are highest. Social support systems are weakest. Access to prenatal and postnatal care is often hardest to find. If the goal is truly to protect life, then there must be more to the policy than simply banning abortion.
A Matter of Autonomy
At its core, this debate is about who should make the most personal, painful decisions a family can face. Should it be the woman? Her spouse? Her physician? Or should it be a state legislature?
The answer should not depend on political affiliation. It should depend on trust—trust in women to understand their bodies, trust in families to make ethical decisions, and trust in doctors to provide care without fear of prosecution.
Pro-Life Means All Lives
It’s time to stop pretending that banning abortion is the same as protecting life. In far too many cases, these laws are doing the opposite.
If we are to call ourselves pro-life, we must mean all lives: the mother facing sepsis, the doctor trying to act ethically, the baby whose loss is already inevitable, the family left behind in grief.
This is not a policy that impacts your neighbor. This is a matter of life and death. And those decisions belong not to lawmakers, but to the people whose lives are on the line.